Best of 2025 - Axed AG tells how Labor really changes the Constitution |
Despite Labor’s longstanding appetite for constitutional reform, former Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus now points to a different path: bold, nation-shaping change without the need for a referendum.
A repost from 25 November 2025
The notion of Constitution reform is not dead within the current Labor Government, but, even with a burst of enthusiasm from the 50th anniversary of the dismissal of Gough Whitlam, it won’t be controversial and it won’t be quick.
That was the takeout from the very thoughtful 2025 Geoffrey Sawer Lecture given on 20 November at the Australian National University by recently axed attorney-general Mark Dreyfus.
Dumped from the ministry by colleagues with a fraction of his capacities after this year’s election, Dreyfus outlined three major changes he wanted, none of them ground-breaking.
But it was away from the difficult, formal (Section 128) constitutional changes that Dreyfus was most interesting, speaking of “a parallel Labor tradition of pursuing nation-building ambitions notwithstanding constitutional limitations on the national government.”
Labor, he said, had and could work “creatively” within the constraints of the written Constitution and be seen to be “pushing at its boundaries”.
He noted the High Court’s development of the implied freedom of political communication, including his having been junior counsel in two........